January 31

Today I am choosing to write about Reuben Bright by Edwin Arlington Robinson.  I found the poem very interesting in that a butcher, who dismembers animals for a living, finds out that his wife “must die” and breaks down.  After her death, the butcher keeps a few keepsakes from his wife and tears down his slaughter house.??  I am really curious as to why his wife had to die and in what manor it was done.  Does the author mean that she was going to die no matter what so she must or did she commit some sort of crime and must be put to death??  Either way, the butcher’s actions are understandable from a point, but I like to have a whole picture of what is going on.  Whether she was put to death or died, the butcher was tired of being surrounded by death and having a constant reminder that she is as dead as the meat he is dismembering and decided to tear down his labor in death and live as peacefully as he could.  I love that the author touches on the fact that most tough guys have a certain image, but are capable of loving just as deeply as others.  So deeply in fact, that the man breaks down into tears that make other women cry.  Anyway, good poem. J

January 26

Yeats poems are quite interesting.  They often have contradicting ideologies within a single poem and he seems to write about love quite often.  After reading Yeats Biography, I began reading his poetry and trying to decide which poems were about his one love Maud Gonne who became a political extremist and was said to have been written about in some of Yeats poetry up to the end.  "He Wishes for the Cloths" is a poem that I feel explains what happened with Maud and Yeats.  He offered up his dreams and love to Maud and hoped that she would accept him and all that included and "tread lightly", but in real life she does not tread lightly and takes an action that severs their connections completely.  Another poem, "The Song of Wandering Aengus", could be interpreted as being before Maud took her politicality to the extreme and when Yeats was endeavoring for her hand in marriage.  There was "fire...in my head" because he couldn't get her to accept the proposal, but he kept searching for that "glimmering girl" in hopes of her accepting him.  If these assumptions are correct, then it is quite an insight into a man's mind who was tormented by a woman who could have cared less.

January 24

All three authors, Hardy, Housman, and Thomas, wrote about God not existing or not caring and death.  All three had troubling lives and it showed in their poetry.  I am going to focus on Hardy for this entry.  One poem in particular caught my attention because this is a fear that a lot of people share, if it is interpreted as I interpret it.  "Neutral Tones" is about a woman who has long since stopped loving her husband and is grinning bitterly as she remembers how her smile trapped her man who she used to love.  She roves over the tedious riddle of how her life came to be such a cliché.  This whole while, the man is still madly in love with the woman and is still smitten with her smile, but when he notices the bitterness in her grin he realizes that his love has blinded him to the truth of her indifference to him now.  He has awakened from his love-struck stupor and realizes that it is plain to see in her face and the dead gray winter scene before him that his wife is completely neutral to him and thus he shall be now.  No one wants their marriage to fail and wants their spouse to be their one true love, but oft that is not the case as the growing divorce rate will tell you.